


Kill Solas

by ThatEldritchBitch



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Minor Dagna/Sera - Freeform, Multi, but also its essentially my first fill, dont expect platinum maybe a sort of burnished silver at best, fair warning im not pulling punches this shit gettin REAL, givin it my level best, i got ideas but like, im kinda just ridin this on the seat of my pants, love kill bill so i had to fill this, minor Briala/Celene, solas really is bill lmao
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2019-04-20 00:35:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14249253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatEldritchBitch/pseuds/ThatEldritchBitch
Summary: Kill Bill except Dragon Age: Inquisition except I'm playing fast and loose with plot points. Enjoy. Remember, you can read the chapters in whatever order tickles your fancy. I'll get 'em all up eventually.Prompt: https://dragonage-kink.dreamwidth.org/88412.html?thread=355644764#cmt355644764





	1. 2

She was a patient type. A careful type. But even carefulness could only justify so long a wait as she intently observed the house before her. It had been built outside the city proper, far from the congestion of Lowtown and the snobbery of Hightown. The gardens appeared lovingly maintained, the flowers and vines creeping over the walls of the home. A cozy fire was visible through the wide open windows. Birds were singing. There was a halla sleeping outside. It was a lovely place.

Such a shame.

The Bride dismounted, patting her Tiddles Majoris as she staked his lead to the ground. Satisfied, she strode along the garden path to the front door, knocking sharply once, twice, thrice. Then she waited. Not for too long.

As the door swung open, she locked eyes with the tiny elf woman before her who looked as if to be mid-greeting. 

“He- oh.”

Rage surged through her in a possessive flame that knocked the breath from her as she _remembered_.

Remembers the pleasantries they exchanged the first time they met, having heard so much about her from Hawke. Remembers the smiles they used to exchange, the knowledge they shared. Remembers how she called this woman her friend. Remembers the blood that was ripped from her pregnant body and thrown in her face as this flower-faced monster looked on impassively.

Suddenly, magic isn’t visceral enough to convey her emotions.

The Bride punches Merrill full in the face with enough force to send the small woman flying backwards. It’s quickly followed by another fist, this one stone.

If Merrill wasn’t awake before, she was now. And the woman before her had just committed a supreme act of foolishness.

Merrill touched her broken nose.

She had made a blood mage _bleed_.

The resulting clusterfuck was a clusterfuck for the ages. Pure and impure collided against each other, the Veil rippling as blood kaleidoscoped across its torn edges. These were magics at the opposite ends of a spectrum and the chaos reflected that; walls were painted red and then torn asunder only to be remade in a fusion more akin to a Deep Road horror than a picturesque cottage, glass shattered, then liquefied, then ran upwards defiant of any physical law. Demons of flesh were born and died and reincarnated as spirits of wrath in the same second. The eluvian stood as a silent guardian watching this all, untouched, from the corner.

And then, “Mama?”

The carnage ceased immediately and, while the two mages panted, Merrill’s obscenely luminous eyes pled with the Bride.

The Bride acquiesced.

“H-hello, da’len, how was your gathering, did you find any elfroot? Oh, it was such a perfect day today, if only I hadn’t been busy with the wash I could’ve joined you.” Merrill chittered at the little girl, and if her eyes glistened a bit more than usual, the Bride made no comment.

“Mama, what happened to you?” The girl asked with wide eyes, too young, too innocent to comprehend but too old to miss the fear in her mother’s face.

“Oh, sweetheart, I, ah, I left the window open I did, and- and the wind just swooped right in, and we know how bad swooping is. Turned the whole place into a disaster, just like that, whooshed everything onto the floor. So there’s nothing to worry about, da’len, nothing at all, I have it under control,” she smiled brightly, too brightly even for her.

The little girl seemed seriously skeptical that wind could make gore and glass splatter on the walls, but she wasn’t going to question it either. Regardless, she was worried for her mother’s condition and figured the truth could wait as she made to step towards her.

Merrill’s eyes widened, holding her hands out towards her daughter, “No, no, da’len, there’s glass on the floor, it’ll cut your feet right up which would be an absolute shame, don’t worry your pretty little head. Mama’s got this, Mama and her, ah, old friend. Haven’t seen her in absolute ages, and she came right on time. Elgar’nain truly blessed her travels, got her here to help just when I needed it.” 

“Hello sweetie, my name is [redacted], what’s your name?” The Bride asked kindly, kneeling down to the girl’s height.

The girl stares.

“Her name is Mare,” the elf woman responded softly.

“Mare,” the Bride tastes the name as it comes off her tongue, smiling afterwards. “That is a truly beautiful name, befitting of such a beautiful girl. How old are you, Mare?”

Mare continues to stare.

“Now, Mare, [redacted] asked you a question,” Merrill reprimanded, looking down at her daughter with the firm gaze only motherhood could teach a person.

“I’m four,” Mare finally answered, hesitation thick in her young voice.

“Four, hmm? You know, Mare, I once had a little girl just like you. She would be about your age now. It would have been lovely to see the both of you friends, just like your mother and I,” she carefully dropped her voice to a near whisper, knowing volume would betray her barely contained fury.

Merrill suppressed a wince, then turned back to her daughter. “Now, da’len, [redacted] and I have a lot of very very important boring very adult things to talk about and quite a lot of cleaning to do, so why don’t you hurry along outside and play with the halla until I call you back in, okay sweetling? Just run along now, you’ve done enough work for today.”

The little girl seemed frozen.

“Marethari, outside, _now_ ,” and there is an edge in her voice that neither the Bride nor the daughter have heard before and its cut is enough to send Mare scuttling away.

Turning to look back at the Bride, there is a visible slump in Merrill’s blood-splattered shoulders. The Bride can’t say she feels much different.

“Would you, oh, I don’t know, would you like some tea?” the elf offers, exhausted.

“That sounds wonderful, Merrill.”

The Bride and the Wife move over to the hearth, Merrill ladling water from the boiling pot into two waiting cups before plucking herbs from hooks with practiced movements. The leaves are summarily crushed between her slender fingers and sprinkled into the glasses, delicately adding a spoon to stir.

“Honey and milk, correct?”

“Yes, that’s right,” the Bride flippantly replied, something twinging inside her she quickly put down.

The Bride scrutinized the deceptively fragile appearing housewife as she waited for the woman to finish fixing the tea. She was Merrill Hawke now, in her own right, but the Bride had known her when she had simply gone as Merrill. Or, as the inner circle, the real one, had wont, the alias “Vinsomer.” Deadly Dragon Assassination Squad. What a joke. A joke that she, as “Highland Ravager” had been queen of, next to her king, Solas.

She shuddered.

Merrill placed the tea before her and the duo settled in for a long overdue tête-à-tête.

With a blithe expression, the Bride inquired “I assume my visit was expected?”

“Yes, yes and no, I suppose. I knew, knew after Val Royeaux that something had certainly occurred and he confirmed it,” Merrill bit her lip. “I suppose I just didn’t expect you so soon… I suppose I had hoped you would never wake at all. And I- I suppose I’m sorry.”

The Bride barked a dry laugh.

“Yes, we are beyond that now, aren’t we? Even if I really, really mean it...” The Bride’s eyes confirmed Merrill’s suspicions. Her hopeful glance hardened into something darker, something the Bride suspected had been placed there years ago, perhaps even before she had participated in the slaughter of her friends, husband-to-be, and her unborn child. 

“This will not happen in front of my daughter.”

“Do you think me a cold, unfeeling, irrational monster, Vinsomer?” Merrill flinched, but the Bride kept on. “I do not now, nor do I ever have any intention of disintegrating you in front of your daughter. Unlike certain individuals, I am capable of discerning the difference between the innocent and the guilty.”

“That’s… more than he led me to expect from you,” Merrill admitted, quietly yet visibly ashamed.

“And that, my dear, is more indicative of just how completely, utterly ignorant Solas is of me in every possible way. How ignorant he is of most everyone and most _especially_ himself. And how foolish you are to trust his word. No, I will not kill you now. But I will also not wait for very long,” she explained, as though to a particularly dense child. “As I have already decided to kill you, you may decide how, and where, it occurs. And it will be a duel. Nobody else, understand?”

“[redacted]...” Merrill attempted to interrupt.

The Bride powered through. “No, shut up, I’m not done. Should anyone else arrive, or should there be any other form of treachery, believe me when I say this, I am a thousand times more treacherous than you, little flower. You have a reasonably decent chance in a fair fight. In an unfair one?” She sneers. “You may as well commit suicide right now.”

“Think of my daughter-”

“You absolute cunt,” the Bride began, the wife straightening as though she’d been slapped across the face, her mouth falling open in a perfectly sad _o_ , “simply because I do not wish to perform an execution in front of a child does not make that child your shield. Getting yourself pregnant was not a miracle. You are not a saint. You could have had every last one of Hawke’s possible children and it wouldn’t change the fact that you. Killed. Mine.”

Merrill’s face was ashen.

“And you should be dropping to your knees and thanking every god you know that I do not desire to get even. Because if I did, that would mean I would have to kill you, and then I would have to go outside, tie Mare down and kill her, and then I would have to wait patiently for your dear Champion to come home, and kill him too,” her teeth set viciously in a mockery of a smile. “And so I ask you again, Merrill? Where? And. When?”

“Tonight.”

The word even seemed to surprise Merrill, but she pursed her lips and let that fire burn.

“Tonight, so I can purge the world of your life and get back to my own,” the elf was clearly furious, “because it seems that even though your life was destroyed, it’s not enough, and you have to try and destroy mine and my daughter’s as well. So tonight. On Sundermount. Where my clan was. Staffs.”

The fade-touched eyes of the Bride crinkled, “That will suffice, Merrill.”

The elf let out a bitter laugh. It seems the world was capable of crushing even the spirit of someone like her. Well. We are always alone in our choices, after all.

“I need to make some dinner for Mare.” 

The Bride waved her hand, granting what permission she had. “You know, Solas was never a fan of blood magic, but even he admitted you were something of an artist with it.”

“Oh, don’t be a fool, we both know he never would say a thing like that, _Highland Ravager_. Hmm, Highland Ravager. What highlands were you from anyway?” Merrill snorted dismissively, bustling about. “Even I would have been more suited as Highland Ravager, I lived in the mountains for years. Though I don’t believe I can say I ever ravaged them, in hindsight.”

The Bride smirked. “Yes, you always were a bit soft, especially in the head.”

“Ooohh, that’s a fine jest, that is,” the elf crooned, reaching into a bag of sliced potatoes. “A fine jest _indeed_!”

The woman threw up a barrier in a movement born of years of practice long the knife completed its trajectory, the knife sticking in the air just shy of where her heart was. The Fade glittered as it turned the blade thoughtfully and sent it careening back, back into the chest of the tiny, elven housewife.

“I- I suppose I have your husband to thank for that move, huh?” The Bride gasped out, the sudden surge of adrenaline leaving her shaking as she stared down at Merrill.

At Merrill’s corpse. 

It was a strange thing, to see a face that had been so full of life, so very dead.

To see someone, someone you would have easily called a friend, collapsed before you with a damning hilt protruding from their heart. One they would have used to kill you with. One they had probably killed before with.

“For what it’s worth, Merrill,” the woman knelt beside her, cupped her face for a moment, and then ripped the knife out with a liquid shluck, “I’m sorry too.”

She stood up. Turned. And looked directly into the eyes that were dead behind her, in front of her in living, green color.

Wiping the blade firmly, one, two, one, two, on her pants leg, she began. “Believe me when I say this is not how I wanted this to occur,” the Bride knelt once more, keeping full contact with Mare’s eyes. “But your mother, you must understand she had this coming. She did things… but that’s not important. What is, is, if you still feel raw about what happened here today, when you get older, feel free to call on me. I’ll be waiting. Farewell and… ir abelas.” On her last words, she rose.

The little girl watches as the big girl leaves her cottage, hears her call out “here Tiddles”, feels her leave for good.

It is only then that she cries.

**DEATH LIST FIVE**  
~~1\. VIVIENNE DE FER (KALTENZAHN)~~  
~~2\. MERRILL HAWKE (VINSOMER)~~  
3\. VARRIC TETHRAS (SANDY HOWLER)  
4\. VELANNA (FERELDAN FROSTBACK)  
5\. SOLAS (DRAGON TAMER)

_I was standing by the window_  
_On a dark and cloudy day._  
_When I saw the hearse come rolling_  
_For to carry my mother away._

_Can the circle be unbroken,_  
_By and by, Lord, by and by._  
_There's a better home awaiting_  
_In the sky, Lord, in the sky._

_Lord, I told the undertaker, undertaker_  
_Please drive slow._  
_For this body you are holding Lord,_  
_Lord, I hate to see her go._

_Can the circle be unbroken,_  
_By and by, Lord, by and by._  
_There's a better home awaiting_  
_In the sky, Lord, in the sky._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjHjm5sRqSA
> 
> I need to rewrite everything ugu.


	2. 2

_“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”_  
\- Madame Vivienne de Fer

It hurts, it hurts so bad, worse than anything she’s ever felt and she knows it’s not just the blood unfurling from her body like so much silk. She can’t move, she can’t _think_ beyond the raw horror of her situation. But she doesn’t regret. Not for a second.

And then his face swims into her rapidly darkening vision.

“Do you find me sadistic?” he inquires softly.

A thousand thoughts sear through her mind, a thousand answers, but the only response he receives is a look of pure hatred. The sneer somehow becomes sharper still as he pulls a cloth from his pocket and begins to dab at her bloody ruin of a face.

“I would have had no use of that orb if the Veil caught your gaze right now,” a wry huff escapes him, as he continues to softly, but no less cruelly, glide the handkerchief across her brow, her cheekbones. “No, vhenan, I would like to believe, even as you are now, you know me well enough to know there is not a trace of sadism in my actions-- well, perhaps to your recently passed joke of a fiance-- but not you.”

His eyes meet hers gently. She could spit. “Never you.”

The forms standing behind him simply stare, waiting for the play to draw to a close. If she turns her head slightly, she can just make out the outline of her hopes and dreams on the floor a few paces away.

_Cullen…_

He draws her focus back to him, unwilling to end it with her elsewhere in any sense of the word.

He bends, kissing her forehead as he whispers, “No, vhenan, at this moment, this is me at my most masochistic.” 

His staff is coming towards her forehead as she, with all the desperation of a dying beast, croaks out:

“Solas... it’s your baby-”

And ice cracks through the air.

~ ~ ~

  
She remembers. As she strides up to Solas’ fortress, all she has left are memories and a singular grim purpose. She remembers Cullen’s best friend, Josephine, radiant in her finery the day of the wedding. Beheaded. She remembers the woman’s girlfriend, Leliana, demur but no less beautiful in her natural tenacity. Gutted. She remembers _her_ best friend, snarky, always there with a biting joke, unabashedly dramatic but honest. So, so honest. They had splattered the root of his honesty across the floor like it was worthless.

_Oh, Dorian…_

She shook her head, forcing her grim recount on.

There was Mother Giselle, who was to wed them. Her assistant, Solanna. There was an organ player, who it even now galled her to think she had never known the name of. 

And then there was Cullen. 

Cullen Stanton Rutherford. She was sure she had heard more pretentious names in her day but she couldn’t think of them if she tried. It certainly didn’t suit the man. He was rough, but humble; he had never once lied to her that she knew of, and she knew a great many things. Perhaps she should be writing his praises down. While nobody else would remember him correctly, she had just about been Mrs. Cullen Stanton Rutherford. It was the least she could have done, considering the hell she brought on his head. But she would do it later. To write them now would be to admit the possibility of defeat. After all, only one person was walking out of the tower in front of her.

And it was going to be her.

The Bride.

 _This_ was the least she could do for Solas, after the past four odd years she’d spent sleeping on the job. She had killed 33 people to get to this point. 33/34. It was a passing grade, fair enough, but being a mage had taught her to strive for perfection in all things. Even this. She was therefore secure in her knowledge of what had to happen. She was going to enter that tower, she was going to find that lying bastard, that number 34, and she was going to end him.

“I’m going to kill Solas.” 

_elgara vallas, da'len_  
_melava somniar_  
_mala tara aravas_  
_ara ma'desen melar_

_iras ma ghilas, da'len_  
_ara ma'nedan ashir_  
_dirthara lothlenan'as_  
_bal emma mala dir_  
_tel'enfenim, da'len_

_irassal ma ghilas_  
_ma garas mir renan_  
_ara ma'athlan vhenas_  
_ara ma'athlan vhenas_


End file.
